Catalina reports that at Zoogle's nine month pediatric appointment, Dr. Springer walked into the consulting room just as Z. was launching into one of his love songs. It was the Queen of the Night come to check on the sterneflammende Taminino, and as their eyes met and the song faded, Dr. S. stumbled, caught her breath, and burst into uncontrollable laughter.
"Apart from having memorized the Zauberflote, anything new?" she asks.
Little to report, of course. There was the usual, a touch of eczema, a chronic splotchiness on the ass, the eruption of a tooth and a propensity for horsey chuckles. Standard baby.
But that was two days, several worlds ago. Today, today everything is different. Today Benjamin sprouted wings, grew fangs, erupted in curly black fur and began to howl at the full red moon rising above the tombstones. Jesus save us, we got ourselves a crawler.
"Crawl" is actually a little strong. "Gimpy wiggle-hobble" is more like it, a Quasimodobaby with malice and angst swapped out for ineptitude and confusion. There is still a strong degree of randomness in his movements. He is a Brownian baby, each lunge a stochastic compass. But behind this flailing one discerns an intention, a definite preference for There to Here, There being where the parent is, the ball, the lead paint chip, the kitchen knife. And although linear trajectories seem plagues of the distant future, they rumble unmistakably on the horizon, dull and gray and vague and ominous, mushroom clouds in postwar America.
Dr. S. concluded her consultation with the observation that Z. was a 'raging bull' of a boy, healthy as a Finnish farmer and a force to be reckoned with. Two days ago we took this as good news. Today, with 'raging bull' boy suddenly self-propelled and honing in on mass destruction, we are wondering exactly how much Dr. S. meant to say.
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